Entry 7:

Dear Sarah:

Did you see Paul Simon's Op-Ed tribute to Joe DiMaggio in the New York Times this morning? It may have a connection with what you've been talking about. Simon, of course, has been mentioned in every obituary of DiMaggio because of his lyric from "Mrs. Robinson": "Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio / A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.'' DiMaggio wasn't too happy about the reference and told Simon why when they met: "What I don't understand is why you ask where I've gone. I just did a Mr. Coffee commercial. I'm a spokesman for the Bowery Savings Bank and I haven't gone anywhere."

There is something touchingly innocent in this literal reading. But the line bothered DiMaggio because he must have felt that the literal was indeed true, that he had indeed gone, that the spotlight had shifted, that he had left behind heroic hitting for commercial pitching. Such is the course of celebrity. Phil Rizzuto is known for the Money Store. Paul Newman for his salad dressing. In ten years, will Michael Jordan be known for cologne?

There may be, in fact, a certain art to being a celebrity, because the public role certainly has its trials. There is the early puff hailing the "up-and-coming embryo," as you put it, there are the years of sustained opportunity--full of pitfalls and temptations--and there is the decline, in which defining attention is withdrawn. Celebrityhood's course is an enactment of mortality (à la Sunset Boulevard). And it is probably most potent when we see it affect sports and film stars who embody, for only a brief time, physical grace and beauty. I risk rehearsing the obvious here, but celebrity magazines have long taken this mortality tale as their central archetype, telling and retelling it, milking it for tragedy and triumph, cannibalizing their gods.

So what happens in the cultural sweepstakes these days? Your bubble analogy may be right: The celebration is fixed on the opening moments, when nothing has yet solidified and all is puff and potential, when we as readers and celebrants feel ahead of the curve, when someone is famous for being about-to-be-famous. A while ago I mourned in the Times how we celebrate trend over tradition. Everything becomes weightless, instantaneous, new. Nothing ages, because once it does, it is gone; nothing even has a past. Is celebrity journalism changing along these lines as well? Everybody is always renewing themselves, discovering salvation, recovering from addiction, getting a makeover.

What Paul Simon suggested this morning is that DiMaggio was notable for none of this. He cultivated (to turn a Simonesque phrase) the sounds of silence. He lived a public myth and then withdrew, not even talking about his life with Marilyn Monroe. He took on some modest marketing roles that played to his image's strengths (alertness and planning--coffee and savings), and seemed to accept the baselines that had been drawn. Except maybe for worrying over Paul Simon's premature farewell.

But now I realize I've gotten carried away and haven't addressed the question you raised about art in such a world. Maybe we'll come back to it. I was also going to end with a paean to elitism.

Saved by the bell.

Best,

Ed